


A Blessing and a Curse

by HugeAlienPie



Category: Murder She Wrote, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Claudia Stilinski, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Come For The Crack, Crack, Crossover, Curses, Danny's Been Here The Whole Time, Established Relationship, I'm Sorry, M/M, Murder, Post-Canon, Stay For The Emotional Journey, Stilinski Family Feels, That Got Weirdly Serious, The Author Examines Her Choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9949445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: Once is an incident. Twice is a coincidence. 5,148 times is a century curse.OR, why people kill each other everywhere Jessica Fletcher goes, and what Stiles and his friends intend to do about it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> idek. I think I'm gonna write 5k of pure crack, and it turns into ~20k of _feelings_. 
> 
> I watched so much _Murder, She Wrote_ as a kid, but I remembered nothing but that darned catchy opening credit music. So I rewatched two episodes in preparation for this. It was all I needed—nay, it is all _anyone_ needed. Really, so long as you know that Angela Lansbury writes murder mysteries, solves murder mysteries, and is wonderfully salty, you're golden here. Curtsies vaguely to _Teen Wolf_ canon through the end of S6, except that 1) Danny's been around the whole time; 2) Claudia gets to stick around and be alive; 3) Stiles didn't go to GW; and 4) Scott and Stiles never completely patched things up after the Theo-Donovan debacle.
> 
> At this point, I don't know whether to blame [the_wordbutler](http://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler/works) or thank her for inciting this. So... thanks. Jerk.

After four years navigating the supernatural politics and etiquette that come with being an emissary, Stiles has gotten a hell of a lot better at thinking before he speaks. Still, when his dad announces that he's leaving first thing the next morning to help Aunt Jess with what she's calling "an unusual case," Stiles can't help but blurt the first thought that pops into his head, which is, "Please don't get murdered!"

Dad shakes his head and says, "Don't be paranoid."

Stiles blinks. "Do you even know me?" he demands. "Have we met?" It's not as funny as it might've been before the Ghost Riders.

Dad gives him a long, searching look, squeezes his shoulder, and goes upstairs to pack.

"You will call me every day," Stiles recites the next morning when they're standing by the door. Dad has a suitcase. Stiles has a list with nineteen bullet points. "You will text at least once an hour. If I text you, you will answer within fifteen minutes, or I will call Sheriff Metzger."

" _Stiles_!" Dad holds up his hand. He looks like he's trying to rein in both a laugh and a scowl. "Yes, I will call once a day. Yes, I will try to text a few times a day. Yes, I will answer your texts as quickly as I can. As _quickly—_ " He leans on the words as Stiles opens his mouth to protest. "—as I can. But this isn't a vacation. I'm going there to _work_."

"Don't act like that'll protect you, Dad," Stiles insists. "Being out-of-town law enforcement actually makes you _more_ likely to be a victim."

"Stiles." Dad sighs. "There's nothing unusual about Aunt Jess."

"You have literally been kidnapped by a Darach. Your son was possessed by, by a chaos spirit, and your wife came back from the dead. 'Nothing unusual about Aunt Jess' is really the hill you want to die on?"

Mom laughs as she appears in the doorway, keys jangling in her hand. "We have to leave, kochanie, or your dad's going to miss his flight."

"I have sixteen more bullet points!"

Dad hugs him hard, and Mom kisses his cheek as she passes. "Be good," Dad says.

"I'll be back in two hours," Mom says.

"Keep your wards on at all times!" Stiles yells at Dad's retreating back. He clutches his list and practices his box breathing. Watching them leave is fucking _hard_. He's lost them too many times already.

*

Mom's back in two hours, as promised. Stiles has cleaned his bedroom, the living room, and the mud room, and he's made a good start on clearing away the branches that fell in the yard after the last storm.

They eat box mac and cheese out of the pot together, an old indulgence from when Stiles was a kid. They finish the yard. They clean the kitchen. Dad's been gone six hours.

"Stiles," Mom says, "he's going to be all right."

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. "I want to believe you, but—"

Her hand cups his neck, warm and solid and real and _alive_. "Then do."

It's a surprisingly compelling argument.

*

They're tucked up on the couch together, binge-watching _Laverne and Shirley_ on Netflix, because Mom's a sucker for the old sitcoms, and Stiles has allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of complacency. While Cyndi Grecco sings about doing it our way, Mom glances over with a look Stiles recognizes all too well, and he braces for impact. "Did you call Danny while I was gone?"

Stiles shakes his head and keeps his glance firmly on the television as he says, "Nope." Mom raises an eyebrow which he tries to ignore. When the eyebrow doesn't go down, he sighs. "I messaged the group chat a couple times, and he answered. But he was busy. You know." Stiles shrugs. "Working."

A pointy elbow jabs his ribs. "He's not working now."

"Yeah, but—" Stiles blows out a hard breath. He's not sure he can explain this to her.

He startles as a warm hand wraps around his own, always so cold since the Nogitsune. "Hey," Mom says gently, "whatever it is, you can tell me. Always."

Stiles laughs shakily. "Yeah, it's, I, I don't know, I guess I'm trying to..." He shakes his head. "I don't know. Ration myself."

"Oh, _Stiles,_ " she says, and he aches with how much she _gets it_. He loves Dad, and he loves Danny, but no one's ever _really_ been on the same wavelength like Mom is. "Stiles, no. Danny loves you. He asked you to move in with him because he wants to be around you."

"I know." Stiles nods vigorously. "Which is why I have to, I don't know, hold back, I guess? until I move in. Don't want him sick of me before I can get my boots in the door." He still doesn't look at her. Doesn't want to see what face she's making.

Stiles' phone rings ten minutes later. When he sees Danny's picture illuminating the screen, he gets up and leaves the room before he answers. For privacy. _Not_ so he can avoid Mom's "I told you so" face.

*

Dad calls every day to check in and give progress reports. Progress is thin on the ground. The crime scene looks weird; the body looks weirder; Sheriff Metzger is _not_ best pleased with Aunt Jess for calling in an outsider. Well, _another_ outsider. Besides herself. By now, everyone in Cabot Cove is used to Jessica Fletcher sticking her oar in.

On his third day gone, Dad sighs and says, "Stiles, I hate to do this to you, but I could use your help out here."

Stiles blinks at the phone. "You sure? I mean, happy to, but—you sure you wouldn't rather have Derek? I can call him; he'd go." For the time being, Derek's settled in southern Oregon. Dad calls him periodically to consult on supernatural-involved cases. Stiles bets Derek would fly to Maine in a heartbeat.

Dad's sigh sounds tinny through the speaker. "It'd better be you. I'm not the expert on this stuff, but this feels more like straight magic than... _creature_ stuff."

Stiles stifles his laugh behind his hand. Mom doesn't bother. "Yeah, okay," Stiles says. "Not like I'm doing anything more important these days. I can fly out tomorrow."

"Thanks, kid," Dad says sincerely.

"De nada, Daddio." Stiles makes finger guns at the phone, complete with shooting sounds. "Love ya, see ya tomorrow, bye." He grins at Mom and slips out of the room to give them privacy.

Up in his room, he pulls out the battered dark green suitcase he's had since junior high and stares blankly into his closet. Most of his big stuff is boxed up and ready to move into the new place, the cheerful, sky-blue cottage he and Danny are renting near the edge of the Preserve. But his wardrobe, such as it is, is still pretty much intact. The thought of sorting through it for a trip of unspecified duration to the other side of the friggin' country makes Stiles feel _tired._ He flops down on the bed next to his empty suitcase and pulls out his phone.

 **ME:** looks like i'm going to me for the foreseeable to help dad  
**ME:** pack goodbye party?

 **NO CANNING PUNS HE HATES THAT:** "going to me"???????  
**NO CANNING PUNS HE HATES THAT:** stiles that doesn't makes ense  
**NO CANNING PUNS HE HATES THAT:** what does that even mean?

 **ME:** maine  
**ME:** sorry

 **REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** Stiles. I am disappointed in you.  
**REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** I'm good, but I'm not a miracle worker.  
**REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** I cannot arrange a party in less than half a day.

 **ME:** that's fine don't sweat it

 **REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** A tasteful pack gathering, on the other hand...

 **ME:** lyds your the best

 **REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** Lake house. 8:00.  
**REALLY HATES THE COLOR ORANGE:** No one bring alcohol. You have no taste.

Stiles is in no way surprised when his phone rings seconds later. He picks it up feeling weary and wary. "Hey, Danny."

"Stiles," Danny says, and he actually sounds angry. Huh. "Why am I finding out _from the group chat_ that my boyfriend is going on an indefinite vacation to the bizarre murder capital of the world?"

"Okay. Okay, look, number one, it's not a _vacation._ Dad's there to work, and I'm going to help, because apparently this is homicide plus magic yay? Two, it's not, I mean, I don't think it's fair to say it's the bizarre murder capital of the whole _world._ The US, maybe?"

"Stiles."

"Yeah. I know." Stiles' shoulders slump, and he leans sideways, letting the suitcase prop him up. "I didn't tell you because... I didn't want you to be mad. Which I know is ridiculous! Because now you're mad!"

"I'm not mad, Stiles."

Stiles wishes he could have werewolf lie-detector powers without _being_ a werewolf. Or at least that he and Danny were having this conversation face-to-face. Stiles has some difficulty reading Danny at the best of times. Over the phone and in an emotionally heightened situation, that difficulty is through the roof. "You're not." He means to make it a question, but instead it comes out sounding flat and disbelieving.

"No," Danny says, managing to sound firm and gentle at the same time. "I'm sad that I can't figure out how to help you believe that I'm serious about you, and that you don't have to _do_ anything to deserve my love. But that's my thing, and I'm definitely not mad at you about it."

"Okay," Stiles says. He's not sure he believes it, but he's heard the rant enough times to know that Danny _absolutely_ believes it, and that arguing will get him nothing but a frustrated boyfriend and another item on the "things Stiles should discuss with his therapist" list.

"I'm staying over tonight," Danny says in his "no arguments" tone. "I'm coming with you to the airport tomorrow. And tonight we're getting to the lake house at seven so Lydia can help us make protection charms for you."

Stiles scoffs. "Danny, I don't _need_ —"

"Homicide plus magic, Stiles," Danny snaps. "I don't want you going in unprotected."

Stiles grumbles, but it's nice that someone cares.

*

Stiles hopes for Dad or Aunt Jess to greet him at the house. Instead it's Seth Hazlitt, who's never been Stiles' biggest fan. Still, they haven't seen each other since Stiles' high school open house. He's matured a lot since then. Bachelor's degree, grad school in the fall, a healthy relationship and a stable pack. Not that he'll tell Seth about the last two.

"Dr. Hazlitt," Stiles says as respectfully as he can as he falls out of the rental car. So much for an impressive entrance.

Seth snorts. "Stiles."

"I, uh, is my dad around?"

"He and Jessica are at the sheriff's station. Arguing with Sheriff Metzger, probably."

Stiles laughs uncertainly. "Yeah, probably." He jerks his thumb at the car and stumbles back toward it. "So I'll just, um—"

"Stiles," Seth says, and Stiles hasn't heard that tone since he was a kid being scolded for poking around in Seth's medical supplies. Stiles pauses and waits. "We've dealt with a lot of murders over the years. And in all that time, Jessica has never felt the need to call in her sheriff nephew from California or his college student son. What has she gotten herself mixed up in this time?"

"Recent college graduate, actually." When Seth just continues to scowl, Stiles smiles sadly and opens the car door. "Something I hope you never have to have explained to you in full," he says and starts the engine before Seth can reply.

Stiles is walking around this world covered in the magical equivalent of full riot gear levels of protection. The ward-making session at Lydia's had been ridiculously prolific. Danny hadn't been entirely convinced that Stiles was protected enough, but when Stiles was so muffled he could barely sense Danny or Lydia's magical signatures, he'd put his foot down on more. The goal was to keep him safe, not to swaddle him so tightly he couldn't make a move to protect himself.

Still, when he walks into the picturesque Cabot Cove Sheriff's Station (a word he needs to stop using, because so far he hasn't spotted a building in town that _can't_ be described as "picturesque"), he staggers under the force of a magic so strong and malevolent he can't fathom how the building's still standing. He rights himself, touching one of his warding charms to give it more oomph, and sets his palm against the wall beside him. Nothing happens. So it's not the building itself carrying this force, but something—or someone—inside.

The bored-looking woman at the front desk gives Stiles a cursory once-over. "Can I help you?" she asks, just polite enough not to warrant a complaint but with a clear air of no actual fucks given.

"I'm looking for Noah Stilinski. The, uh, the visiting sheriff from California? Or Jessica Fletcher. If, uh, if she's here."

The woman sighs and punches a button on the phone. "Sheriff Metzger? There's some kid looking for Mrs. Fletcher." Her finger moves toward the disconnect button.

"Or Sheriff Stilinski!" Stiles shouts, hoping Sheriff Metzger, or Dad, if he's in the office, will catch it before the intercom disconnects. "Thanks," he says, and if more than a little sarcasm sneaks into his tone, well, he's only human. Well, ninety percent human, ten percent spark.

The door behind the reception desk opens, and a man who has to be Sheriff Metzger comes out. He's a big guy, tall and broad, with a wide face and sharp eyes. Stiles instantly recognizes the look the sheriff trains on him, because he's seen it on his father thousands of times—kind but wary in the face of an unknown entity. "Can I help you, son?" he asks.

Stiles steps forward, ignoring the glare the woman at the desk gives him. "Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff. I'm Noah's son."

"Sure, sure." Metzger's face relaxes a little, but not all the way. "Noah said you were coming. Not sure why, though. You a cop?"

Stiles shakes his head. In Beacon Hills, no one thinks twice about Stiles breezing in and out of the station. He brings lunch for Dad and Jordan; drops off things Dad has "forgotten" at home; one summer he even spent four boring hours a day scanning old paper case files into the database to have an excuse to look over records and help the department out with some of their supernatural cases. But no one here knows that or him. To them he's just some kid who's wandered into their town. He's not law enforcement; he'll have to tread very carefully here.

"Oh, he's here for me! How embarrassing. I forgot to mention it."

Stiles lifts his head and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. If you don't know better, you can easily believe that Aunt Jess is a dotty old lady who's forgotten that her grandnephew is coming to mind her. Of course, everyone in this place _does_ know better, so Stiles isn't sure who she's trying to fool.

She walks over to him, taking slower, more careful steps than he remembers her taking the last time he saw her. He can't tell if this is part of her playing up the doddering elder schtick or if she's that much slower. He last saw her four years ago. At her age (whatever that is), that can make a huge difference.

"Stiles," she says, her tone as always that mix of warm, welcoming, and take-no-bullshit. She holds out her hands and leans in for the cheek kiss. "So good of you to come."

Stiles reaches out automatically. He takes her hands. And then he _reels_ as the magical force he's been feeling since he opened the door crackles from her fingers to his like electricity. It's _her_.

Stiles staggers back, keeping his feet by the grace of the station wall at his back. Aunt Jess looks at him, faintly confused, like she's not sure what happened. That can't be faked. If she _felt_ the same amount of power flowing out of her that Stiles felt coming into him, she'd've been rocked, too, even if she'd done it on purpose. Whatever it is, she doesn't know it's pouring out of her. He braces and lets her kiss his cheek. It reminds him of the last time Kira's foxfire got out of control; it had whipped him across the face and left it in that same kind of burning, crackling agony. But the extra hit makes it easier to read, to take a measure of. Makes it easier to realize that it's not _part_ of Aunt Jess. This isn't _her_ magic. It was put on her from some outside source.

He smiles as best he can, though it probably looks more like a grimace, given the way the pull of muscles causes pain to flare hot and bright in his cheeks again. "Aunt Jess," he says. "It's great to see you." _Jesus_ , he thinks. If this is what it feels like with a small arsenal of warding charms, what's it like at full power?

"Aunt Jess," Dad calls from the open door of Sheriff Metzger's office, "I'm sorry, but I need to borrow Stiles for a minute first."

Stiles smiles again and disentangles himself from Aunt Jess's hold. She smiles absently and wanders over to talk to Sheriff Metzger. Stiles walks over to Dad, who motions him into the conference room beside the sheriff's office. He closes the door and leans against the table with a heavy sigh. "This town, Stiles, I swear."

Stiles laughs. "Not up to your stellar standards?"

"Beacon County may be a small-time operation," Dad says, rubbing a hand over his face, "but _come on_." He holds a folder out to Stiles. "On the upside, no one batted an eye at my saying I wanted to show you the autopsy photos."

Stiles opens the folder and fights down the bile that rises in his throat. He nods. "That right there is your garden-variety magical ritual killing. Less powerful than a Darach but still trouble." He forces himself to look more closely at the picture. "This is—oh, shit, this looks like the second victim. Looks like there'll be three more."

Dad's expression is grim. "Shit. Any idea how we find them?"

"A few, yeah. I'll get you in touch with some people." He closes the folder and holds it back out to Dad. "There's another problem."

Dad sighs through his nose as he takes back the folder. "Yeah?"

"Aunt Jess has a curse on her."

Dad's eyes go wide and hurt. "What? No way, Stiles. No."

" _Yes_. Dad, you can't feel what I feel when she touches me. There is some very strong malign magic clinging to her. It's not coming _from_ her, so it has to be either a curse or a possession. And as the room's leading expert on possession, I'm going with curse." He grins at his own joke, too sharp and feral.

"Okay." There's a minute tremor in Dad's hands that says how _not_ okay he is. "We can fix this. I will focus on finding the killer. No idea how I'm going to subtly bring Metzger around to the idea of magical ritual killings, but I'll handle it. _You_ work on figuring out the curse and breaking it. And don't tell Jessica."

Stiles' eyes widen. "What? Dude, I can't break a curse without talking to the cursed person."

"Look, if she doesn't know—wait. How can you not know you're _cursed_?"

Stiles swallows hard and looks away. "It's possible."

Dad grimaces, realizing his mistake. "She's _really old_ , Stiles. And the most practical, no-nonsense person I know. If we tell her she's cursed, she'll either think we've gone crazy or she has."

The logic on this is suspect, at best, and Stiles feels a preemptive headache building at the thought of trying to break Aunt Jess's curse without talking to Aunt Jess about it. But he can try for his dad. He won't even voice his suspicion that Dad is doing this less for Aunt Jess than for himself, because he wants _one_ relative who isn't messed up in the supernatural.

Dad shakes his head. "Jesus Christ. A curse. We can't catch a break, can we, kid?"

Stiles claps Dad's shoulder and smiles sadly. "No, we cannot, Daddio."

*

Stiles searches for 48 hours solid. Like, _solid_. He catches a few catnaps and eats when Dad (sometimes acting on his own accord, sometimes as proxy for Danny or Lydia) forces him to. Otherwise, if his eyes are open, he's searching.

He's called Danny five times and Lydia three. He has chat threads open with Deaton, Morrell, Chris, and Derek. He's called in favors and created new debts. He's read every reliable book in the Cabot Cove Public Library (in New England, the country's original hotspot for both witchcraft and witch-hunting, even towns as small as Cabot Cove have treasure troves of resources on both cursing and curse-breaking).

By the end of the second day, he's so tired he can barely put one foot in front of the other. He's wired beyond measure from two days living mostly on energy drinks and whatever he could scrounge out of vending machines around town. He walks—wobbles, really—into the small side conference room Sheriff Metzger's offered Dad while he's in town, trips over the nearest chair, and falls into it gratefully.

Dad looks up, horrified. "You look like shit, kid."

"Thanks." Stiles grimaces and leans over enough to swing the door shut, nearly managing to both fall out of the chair and brain himself with the door in the process.

"What have you found out?"

Stiles groans. " _Everything_. That's the problem." He pulls his thumb drive out of his jeans pocket and waves it. "I've filled half of this damned thing with notes. The problem isn't too little information. It's too _much_. With no parameters to narrow it down, I'm writing down everything I find about every curse I come across. It's interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's won't help Aunt Jess." He leans forward in his chair and looks at Dad beseechingly. "I have to tell her."

"Damn it, Stiles, you _can't_. She won't be able to take it."

"She'll be fine. She's survived wars and buried her husband and dealt with God only knows how many people being _murdered_ around her. I doubt a little thing like a curse will faze her."

Dad opens his mouth, probably to point out that most people don't consider being cursed "a little thing," but the door opens and Sheriff Metzger sticks his head inside. "I'm headed out, Noah. Why don't you call it a day, too? Take yourselves out for dinner or something."

Stiles and Dad exchange a swift look of panic, wondering how much of their conversation the other sheriff overheard. Then Dad puts his professional mask in place and says, "Great idea, Mort. See you tomorrow."

They bicker on and off throughout dinner, but in the end, Stiles can't see any other way. He understands his father's objections and knows that he's being obstinate because they're getting nowhere with the search for the killer and have no idea when the next victim will fall. But Stiles marshals his arguments and refuses to yield, and finally Dad relents.

"But let me do the talking, kid. Diplomacy is still not one of your strong suits."

"Hey, I am _great_ at diplomacy. It's just that werewolf diplomacy sometimes sounds really damn rude when you're dealing with normal humans." Turns out werewolves are like Klingons that way.

Dad snorts and leads the way out of the restaurant. "Jessica had a meeting with her agent today. Should be home by now. Maybe we can take her some ice cream and talk."

Stiles grins as he changes course toward the best ice cream place in town. "Ice cream fixes everything," he says. "That's Mom's influence."

Dad gets that quiet smile he always gets when he thinks about Mom. Stiles wonders if he looks the same when he thinks about Danny. Wonders if Danny looks the same thinking about him. "There are a lot worse influences in this world, kid," Dad says, and Stiles wouldn't dream of disagreeing.

*

Stiles' brain works _fast_ , okay? He's spun seven ways this could go down by the time they're sitting at the table with Aunt Jess and their bowls of ice cream.

One scenario he _hasn't_ foreseen was Aunt Jess putting down her spoon, taking a deep breath, and saying, " _Finally_."

While Dad and Stiles blink at her with probably identical gobsmacked expressions, Aunt Jess draws another deep breath (this time, Stiles hears how shaky it is) and lets it out very slowly. "I'm barred from speaking about it, and I've been waiting for almost a hundred years for someone to figure it out."

"Y-you _knew_?" Stiles demands.

"Jessica, what the _hell_?" Dad demands.

Aunt Jess waves a hand at them. "Calm down, both of you," she says. "Yes, of course I know. How could you not know you're cursed?" Stiles grits his teeth so hard they squeak. "Even if I hadn't felt the curse hit, once people started dropping dead around me in droves, it got hard to miss."

Dad scowls. "What do you mean, 'barred from speaking about it'?"

"Most curses have that clause," Stiles says. "Sort of a magical NDA. Otherwise, you'd walk up to the next magic-user you found and ask them to lift it."

"How do you _know_ that?" Dad grumbles.

"Wait, back up," Stiles says. "Did you say _a hundred years_?"

" _Almost_ a hundred years. January 5, 1919. I was living in Boston at the time. World War I had been over for less than two months—the war to end wars, people called it. Because people are fools."

"What... what _happened_?" Stiles asks.

"If you don't mind us asking," Dad adds hastily.

"Even if you _do_ mind," Stiles says. "I can't break this thing until I know where it came from."

Aunt Jess' eyebrows lift at that, which, given her usual New England reserve, is like a shout from most people Stiles knows. He suddenly feels weirdly nostalgic for Derek's ridiculous eyebrows. "You're going to lift my curse? Forgive me, Stiles, but that seems unlikely."

Stiles doesn't know what happens when he switches from "Stiles the bumbling, sarcastic college student" to "Stiles the badass emissary." Almost everyone in the pack has commented on the fact that he does it, but no one's tried to describe it to him. He feels different when he stops laying that affable façade over what he now thinks of as his more genuine self, but he doesn't let anyone see it often, not even Danny, and he's never taken the time to catalogue the changes. But he knows he's done it because Aunt Jess gasps and sits up straighter, and Dad tenses at his side. "Yeah, Aunt Jess," he says, quiet but confident. "Me."

Everything comes out in interrupted chunks. The story of the Stilinskis' involvement with the supernatural, from Peter biting Scott in the woods to Stiles becoming Scott's emissary the summer after they graduated high school. They leave some things out because they're irrelevant or too hard to talk about, but by the end Aunt Jess has a pretty good idea of what Stiles can do and seems convinced that he's the right man for the job of lifting her curse.

So they make green tea and dish up more ice cream (because life is _a giant fucking mess_ so eat more ice cream), and Aunt Jess tells a story.

At this point, Stiles has a confession to make. Because the thing is, he's read every single one of Aunt Jess's books—she's family, and that's what family does for each other—and he's been bored with them all. The plots are predictable; the characters are homogenous; and the prose moves as quickly as a pool of cold molasses. He's not expecting much from storytime. But apparently he should've been getting the audiobooks, or just having Aunt Jess read them to him. Because within seconds, her story's enraptured him. He leans forward, tea and ice cream forgotten by his hand as he lets her words wash over him. Even if the information weren't vitally important, he would've been mesmerized.

"Do you know," she begins, "I'd just run next door to borrow embroidery floss from my neighbor Maisey. As I came down the front steps, a young man, perhaps twenty, and a young woman holding a baby were walking past. It was a bitterly cold January day, and no one else was around. Just as I was about to wave hello, another man leapt out of the hedgerow at the house next door and stabbed the young man without a sound! Then he took off running.

"It happened so fast I barely had time to understand it. But there was a man on the sidewalk, bleeding, a woman holding a baby, both screaming, and a man rushing away.

"Now, Maisey had driven an ambulance during the war. She had medical training. I hadn't a jot. But I was _fast._ So I screamed for Maisey and went tearing after the other man. I caught him three blocks away when he tripped over a rake, and I sat on him until the man who owned the house brought rope to tie him with. Then I sat on him some more while I waited for the police."

Aunt Jess looks into her teacup, and her voice falters for the first time in the telling. "Felix Gray stabbed Arthur Hatton over a five-dollar desk and a miscommunication about its contents. Maisey did everything she was supposed to, but Arthur died that night in the hospital."

She takes a deep breath, and Stiles knows they're coming to the meat of it. "I went to the funeral. I felt… connected to the Hattons after what happened. Only much later did I discover that Enid Hatton, Arthur's widow, viewed me as less 'connected to' and more 'responsible for' her husband's death. And later still before I learned that she was also a powerful witch.

"Enid felt I'd chosen justice over life." Aunt Jess shakes her head. "I don't know. Maybe I did. I couldn't have done anything for Arthur, but there was no way for her to know that. So she cursed me. Suddenly, people were being murdered all around me. Seldom anyone very close to me, but people in my neighborhood, at my church. It seemed like I couldn't go anywhere without someone killing someone else. But I could solve it. I could _always_ solve it."

"Justice over life," Stiles says. His mind whirls rapidly through the options that leaves.

Aunt Jess nods. "I could solve the murders, but I had to live with the knowledge that, if not for me, they wouldn't have happened in the first place."

"Hey, no." Stiles reaches out and grips her hand. "It's not your fault. You're cursed. This is not on you."

She smiles wryly at him. "My head knows that. My heart is harder to convince."

And, damn, does Stiles get that.

"What I don't get," Stiles says, flopping back in the couch in a way that earns him a scowl from Dad and a quickly smothered grin from Aunt Jess, "is how the curse is still _going_. I mean, that was almost a hundred years ago, and you were already—how old were you?"

Aunt Jess makes a face at him that he doesn't buy for a second. "A lady never reveals her true age, Stiles."

Dad barks a laugh. "I bet."

Looking pleased that her joke landed well, she says, "I was just shy of my twentieth birthday."

Stiles does the math in his head and almost chokes on his tongue. "You—holy fucking Jesus Christ, you're 118?"

"Stiles, _language_ ," Dad says sharply.

Aunt Jess nods serenely. "And a half."

"Okay. Okay. Jesus." Stiles rubs both hands over his head and tries to think. "Enid Hatton would be—what, the same age? So how is she still alive and powering this curse?"

"Ah. Hang on." Aunt Jess stands and walks out of the room. Stiles feels Dad's eyes on him, but he can't look over. There's too much going on in his mind; if someone else interferes, he's afraid his thoughts will scatter and be lost forever.

Aunt Jess returns with a banker's box labeled "Enid Hatton." She sets it on the coffee table, opens the lid, and pulls out an envelope in a plastic sleeve. "I received that in 1981," she says.

Stiles gingerly pulls the envelope out of the sleeve and the letter out of the envelope. There are actually two letters. The outside one reads,

> _Mrs. Fletcher,_
> 
> _My grandmother died last month, and it fell to me to go through her things for the estate sale. In her desk I found this letter and instructions on how to find you and mail it to you. Were you and Gran close? I'm sorry, I don't remember her mentioning you. If I had, I would have let you know of her passing soon, so you could attend the funeral._
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
> _Abel Hatton_

Stiles snorts at the idea of Aunt Jess attending this woman's funeral. _He_ would've, if he were the one cursed, to make sure she was well and truly dead. But Aunt Jess probably doesn't have the same experience with dead people not staying dead. He moves on to the next letter.

> _Jessica Fletcher._
> 
> _If you are reading this, I have died. I'm sure you were hoping that when that happened, your curse would be lifted. If I were a lesser witch, that would be true. However, as I am strong in both talent and allies, I have transferred maintenance of your curse to a fellow member of my circle. I will not tell you who, so that you will not be able to find them and beg them to remove your well-deserved punishment. When they feel their time is near, they will transfer it to someone else, and then to someone else, and so on, for so long as humans inhabit this earth. You stole my great love, and my son's father. The price for that has not yet been paid in full._
> 
> _Enid Hatton_

Stiles rolls his eyes, but his fingers are shaking slightly as he returns the letters to the envelope and puts everything back in the plastic sleeve. "Jeez. Melodramatic much?"

"Stiles," Dad begins warningly.

Stiles shakes his head. "The thing is... curses aren't supposed to work like that. I mean, unless you had actual friggin' Hitler under a curse, you wouldn't make someone else carry it for you. Curses are _personal_. Someone wrongs you, bam, you curse them. No one else should be _able_ to carry it unless they hate you, too."

Aunt Jess looks helpless as she locked eyes with him. "I've ruined plenty of lives over the years," she says quietly. "Not just the murderers I've put in jail but innocent people whose secrets I've had to uncover to find out the truth. People who lost spouses and parents and children because of this curse. If one of them already bore a grudge, it wouldn't be hard for the curse carrier to convince them to continue it."

Stiles rubs his eyes. "Fuck. You're right."

"Stiles, what have I _told_ you about the swearing?" Dad says with a long-suffering tone.

Aunt Jess shakes her head. "It's a _fishing town_ , Noah. You think I don't hear worse jogging past the docks every morning?"

Stiles grins. This is why Aunt Jess is his favorite.

She yawns. "Now, if you'll excuse me, these 118-year-old bones require a _lot_ of sleep."

"Yeah. I'm—I should turn in, too. Now that I know more about the curse, I can dive back into the research tomorrow." Impulsively, Stiles stands and wraps Aunt Jess in a hug. She startles and then relaxes into it.

"Thank you, Stiles," she whispers in his ear as they cling to each other. She stands there for several more seconds before she steps back. She looks more settled than she was when they started this conversation. Stiles will count that as a win. Aunt Jess looks around, and her eyes widen when they fall on the banker's box. "Oh! I almost forgot. Stiles, those are my notes."

Stiles' eyebrows go up. "Notes?"

She nods. "Once I could bring myself to believe I'd been cursed, I started keeping notes on the murders that were happening around me. Basic details—name, sex, race, life dates. How they died, who killed them, who they left behind, what connection, if any, they had to me. Most of them are there. The other box is in the attic."

Stiles opens the box gingerly. He almost expects a rush of magic to hit him, as though the mere record of almost a century of a murder curse would create malignant energy around itself. But it's just a box of small, leather-bound notebooks. He lifts the top one and carefully opens it to reveal paragraph after dense paragraph of Aunt Jess's tiny, precise handwriting. He whistles. "Damn, Aunt Jess." He starts flipping through the pages, too fast to read the entries, but slow enough to get a sense of how many there are.

The book is whisked out of his hands and back into the box, and Dad slams the lid down. "Tomorrow," he says firmly. "You can look tomorrow."

Stiles smiles sheepishly at Dad, ignores Aunt Jess's startled laugh, and makes his way up the stairs to the second guest room. He has too many thoughts zooming around in his head for sleep to come easily, and he's itching to get back to that box, but Dad's right: staying up all night reading won't help Aunt Jess or anyone else.

He picks up his phone and scrolls through the texts he's missed. Mostly Mason complaining about how hard it is to wait for his final grade report and Corey distracting him with puppy gifs. Dorks.

He switches to his text thread with Danny. Danny's been quiet since Stiles came to Cabot Cove, saying he prefers to let Stiles work with minimal distraction so he can solve the case and get home sooner. Stiles isn't thrilled about having to send this text.

 **ME** : hey, so

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : oh boy  
**ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : i like this conversation already

 **ME** : yeah, sorry

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD:** you catching a killer?

 **ME** : I'm leaving that to dad actually. i got another thing

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : ???

 **ME** : aunt jess's cursed  
**ME** : jess is  
**ME** : that looks weird

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : are we talking metaphorically cursed or

 **ME** : no. definitely a real curse

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : only you, stiles

 **ME** : that seems like a fair assessment of our lives, yes

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : okay, well, my request doesn't change  
**ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : get home as fast as you can  
**ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : call me if you need me  
**ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : text periodically so i know you're not dead

 **ME** : i accede to your demands, good sir

 **ALLERGIC TO COCONUT, POOR BASTARD** : good. now tell me about this suspiciously quaint town you've fallen into. I mean, that can't be natural

 **ME** : RIGHT?!?!?!?

*

The next morning, Dad goes back to hunting for a killer, and Stiles goes back to hunting for a curse. Progress is _glacial_. Aunt Jess's story, and the one notebook he allowed himself to read before going to sleep last night, allow him to eliminate whole swathes of options, spells that don't fit anymore. But what remains is complex, powerful work. Stiles had suspected that would be the case, given how long the curse has endured, but seeing it laid out this starkly brings a lump to his throat that he can't clear. He promised Aunt Jess he would fix this. He will _not_ be made a liar.

By the time the librarian, whom he's come to know quite well over the past week, shoos him out at closing time, all Stiles has to show for his day of work is a half-full thumb drive and a pounding headache. He's revived his multiple text threads, and he knows that if he says the word, Danny and Lydia, and possibly even Derek and Chris, would be on a plane and headed toward him in a heartbeat. But he hates to disrupt anyone else's life more than he already has, so he vows to struggle through.

Then he walks through Aunt Jess' front door and finds her leaning over the sink, her usual resolve crumpled like cheap newspaper. She looks up at him, for one moment letting him see the full weight of guilt and loss she carries with her at all times before she pulls her mask back into place. "There's been another murder," she says, quiet but firm, although now that he's seen what's underneath, the facade seems transparent and brittle. "Like the last one."

Stiles swears and half-stumbles across the kitchen to catch her in a hug. She doesn't let it go on for as long as she did last night, but she still looks steadier on her feet when she pulls away. "Thank you," she murmurs. She wipes her eyes and goes back to prepping potatoes. Without a word, Stiles washes his hands and starts chopping the potatoes she's already peeled. Mom's a firm believer in the power of _doing_ to heal the heart's wounds, and Stiles does find it helps him stay focused when his mind wants to run off in a thousand directions.

Dinner is somber, all three of them lost in their own thoughts. Seth, with his unerring Jess-sense, swings by after dinner and cajoles her into going to a movie with him. He and Dad have a few quiet words by the door while she's getting her purse. Stiles can't hear them, but when he happens to walk past the door a few minutes later, Seth looks incredibly thoughtful, and he actually—well, he doesn't _smile_ at Stiles, but his scowl doesn't get any deeper, and that is frankly a minor miracle.

After they leave, Stiles and Dad talk for a couple minutes about the progress (or lack thereof) in their respective endeavors. Then they talk shit about baseball. Then they call Mom, and four and a half years later, Stiles' heart still clenches every time he hears her voice, a mix of exultation that she's alive and terror that she's going to be ripped away again. Then Stiles goes upstairs and makes a call of his own.

He doesn't mean to fall asleep straight away after, but the last few days have had a _lot_ going on in them. He wakes up sprawled on top of the covers, fully dressed, just shy of midnight. He groans and shuffles himself upright, then smacks his lips. Water. He needs water.

He's still mostly asleep, so he doesn't register as quickly as he should that a light is on in the kitchen. And he doesn't really understand the scene in front of him until he's been staring at it for too long.

He's always admired Aunt Jess' friendship with Seth Hazlitt. He used to point at them as role models for himself and Scott, calling them "bffs for _really_ ever." He used to imagine himself and Scott as old as Seth and Aunt Jess are and still being closer than brothers.

So there was a time when Stiles would've _loved_ the scene in front of him. Aunt Jess and Seth are sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, hands clasped on top of it, heads bent so close they might actually be holding each other up. Stiles can't hear what they're saying—can't tell if they're talking at all. But here are two people who've been through damned near everything together and are more than willing to prop each other up when going on alone gets too rough.

Stiles swallows. He shouldn't be seeing this. Not just because it's a private moment, but because it makes him think about his own losses. He and Scott have never fully recovered from the mess with Donovan and Theo, and now Stiles can't picture them in those chairs. Maybe it'll be him and Lydia, instead. That sounds nice, but thinking of what he's lost _hurts_.

Stiles backs up slowly and quietly. He doesn't need water that badly.

*

Stiles' mood when he wakes up the next morning is the textbook definition of "ambivalence." On one hand, he can barely contain his excitement and relief at knowing that Danny and Lydia will be here in less than 28 hours. On the other hand, their impending arrival means he has to have a conversation that he is _not_ looking forward to.

"Good morning, Aunt Jess," he says as he breezes into the kitchen. He drops a kiss on her cheek and steals a piece of toast off Dad's plate. Dad grumbles but reaches out and snags another piece out of the cute little rack of them in the middle of the table. His expression clearly says, _See? You could've done that, too._ But whatever. Everyone knows stolen food tastes better.

"Good morning, Stiles," Aunt Jess says with a smile. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well, I slept!" Stiles evades easily. Dad's eyes narrow, but Aunt Jess laughs, which was the primary goal. "Listen, Aunt Jess," he says, forcing himself to keep his tone light and his body language open, "this curse is way tougher to pin down that I'd thought."

"It's okay," she says, patting his hand. "I've lived with it this long. I can go on living with it."

"Oh, no." Stiles shakes his head and waves his toast around, ignoring Dad's scowls at the shower of crumbs that falls on him. "I _can_ break it. I just need help figuring out the components. So two of my friends—my, uh, packmates, actually—will be flying out here first thing tomorrow morning."

Aunt Jess smiles. "Oh, that'll be nice. I've never met a werewolf. At least, not that I know."

Stiles coughs. In this town? Anything's possible. "Uh, these aren't werewolves. Lydia's a banshee. Danny's, um, a magic-user. Like me." That's a blatant lie. Danny's magic is _nothing_ like Stiles' spark. But it's been three years and they still don't understand what Danny is or where his magic comes from, so it's easier to say that Danny's "like me."

"Well, that'll be nice, too." Then she startles. "Lydia? The one you were so fascinated with for all those years?"

"Yeah, uh... yeah." Stiles smiles sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck. "I'm not proud of those years, to be honest. But! She's one of my best friends now, so that's great."

Aunt Jess eyes him carefully. " _Is_ it?"

"Yes." Stiles nods fast and hard. "Yes, absolutely, it is."

Aunt Jess studies his face for another minute, maybe searching for a lie, and then nods. Then she frowns faintly, and her gaze flicks toward the upstairs. "I'm not sure where we'll put them. You and Noah could share the larger guest room, I suppose, and one of them can stay in the smaller one. I can make up the couch in the den for the other. I'm told it's surprisingly comfortable."

"No, it's—that's okay. Lydia's booked herself a room at the inn." Aunt Jess will surely have something to say about _that_ , so he quickly continues, "It's better for everyone. Lydia's very particular about her space. She figures it's better to do it at a hotel, where at least she can tip well for putting people out." Aunt Jess sniffs but doesn't argue. Stiles takes a deep breath and catches Dad's sympathetic expression out of the corner of his eye. _Hoo boy. Here we go._ "And, uh. Danny. Will stay with me." He holds his breath and waits to see if the penny will drop for Aunt Jess or if he'll have to spell it out more. He really hopes he doesn't have to spell it out more.

"Hmm," Aunt Jess says. That's it. Just "hmm." Then she stirs more sugar into her coffee and looks at Stiles with a considering eye. "You're gay, then?"

"Um, pan, actually. It means, uh, I'm attracted—"

"I know what pansexuality is, Stiles," Aunt Jess says tartly. "You obviously didn't read my last book."

Stiles _had_ read her last book. He'd been grudgingly impressed by how well she handled the gay subplot. But those characters were as gay as a mountain stream, which doesn't automatically indicate understanding the vast panoply of human sexuality

"Anyway," Aunt Jess continues, "it's just good sense, is how I see it."

"What is?" Dad asks.

"Pansexuality. Bisexuality, too. It's been a long time since I've gone on dates of any sort, mind. But back when I did, I found it best to keep my options open."

"Aunt Jess!" Stiles chokes on literally nothing. Dad's eyebrows are doing a complicated dance that could give Derek's a run for their money. "But you were dating in, like, the _forties_."

"And the twenties." Aunt Jess tuts at them. "Oh, young people. Always acting like you invented sex. Now," she continues, because she is _relentless_ , "you and Danny. How long?"

Stiles feels the soppy grin creeping over his face. "Four years this August."

Her eyebrows go up. "That sounds serious."

Stiles swallows hard and nods. She's not _wrong_ , but the question of the seriousness of the relationship is one that's giving him trouble right now.

"They're moving in together next month," Dad announces with too much glee. He and Mom are _inordinately_ excited about Stiles moving out. "Renting a house near the Preserve instead of an apartment downtown because Danny wants dogs."

"Dad oh my god," Stiles mumbles as his face moves from "barely warm" to "spontaneous combustion" levels of embarrassed heat.

"Danny." Aunt Jess's brow furrows like she's concentrating hard. "I met him, didn't I? At your graduation. The trumpet player."

Stiles grins. Leave it to the writer to focus on Danny's artistic pursuits, even though Danny hated playing trumpet and only stuck it out through high school because his mom insisted that he and his sisters have at least one non-athletic extracurricular. Stiles nods. "That's him."

"Well, my goodness," she says, fanning herself. "Well _done_ , Stiles." As Stiles swears he feels actual flames licking his cheeks and Dad makes a sound not unlike a stranded seal pup, Aunt Jess leans over and pats his hand, saying more seriously, "I'm happy for you. You deserve someone good in your life."

Stiles is in no way sure he agrees with that assessment. But he and Dad have had the argument plenty of times, and he'd like to avoid having it here, where Aunt Jess will surely take Dad's side. He smiles weakly and mumbles some excuse about needing to get back to his curse research before grabbing his coffee and bolting from the table like a coward.

*

Stiles had a half-formed fantasy of unlocking the curse once Danny and Lydia's plane was in the air. With no way to stop them from coming, he would greet them at the airport with the news that everything was resolved. Danny and Lydia would stay in Cabot Cove, and the three of them would help Dad catch the killer and enjoy the first real vacation they've had since before werewolves so rudely crashed into their lives when they were sixteen.

Instead, he greets them at the airport with a pout he can't quite force off his face and a surly, "This curse is ridiculous."

"Your face is ridiculous," Lydia says, so primly it takes him a minute to realize she's messing with him. He grins and pulls her into a hug that has her squirming and slapping his arm in seconds, complaining about her clothes getting wrinkled.

"We're directly next to the ocean, Lyds," he says as he lets her go. "I think your clothes are a lost cause."

She sniffs. "Shows how much you know." Which, when it comes to the arcane magics that keep Lydia's clothes looking good no matter what supernatural shit they face down, fair enough.

Stiles turns to Danny, bracing for the worst. But Danny's just standing there, loose-limbed and bright-eyed, an easy smile on his gorgeous face as he watches Stiles and Lydia roughhouse. "Hi," Danny says softly.

Stiles laughs helplessly. "Hey." He staggers a half-step forward. "God, it's good to see you."

Then he's in Danny's arms. Not to be disloyal to his parents, but Danny's hugs are _the best_. Probably because Danny presses his lips to the skin in front of Stiles' ear and whispers, "I've missed you so much." Probably because Stiles can press Danny close to him and think about all the glorious muscle and skin under those his jeans and blue T-shirt, can think about Danny pressing _even closer_ , pressing inside of him, filling this shaky, looming emptiness he's been fighting since he got here. Probably because he can cling to Danny and cry, and Danny doesn't do a thing but rub Stiles' back and say, "Hey, I love you."

After everything they've been through together and everything they are to each other, there's no point to small-talk. As they drive toward Aunt Jess's house, they dive into the particulars of the curse (interspersed with Danny loudly and angrily declaiming Cabot Cove's postcard-perfectness). Lydia thinks she'll have the best chance of breaking it, since it's a death-related curse. Stiles isn't so sure. Lydia likes things to be sensical and orderly, and this curse has proven to be nothing but chaos. His money's on Danny, whose power, inasmuch as they've been able to figure out _anything_ about it, seems connected to the wilder primordial forces. If anyone can crack a chaos curse, it's the guy who once accidentally made a centuries-dormant volcano erupt. Just a little. Everyone was _fine_ , thanks, and Stiles doesn't understand why Deaton is still so upset about it.

Stiles is nervous, for his own sake, about Aunt Jess meeting Danny. But he's _terrified_ , for the world's sake, about Aunt Jess meeting Lydia. It seems like a match-up that ends in world domination.

And yet, when they all meet, Aunt Jess sweeps Danny into a hug that he returns easily, but Lydia stands back, resistant. Which isn't like her. She acts aloof and standoffish, but she loves hugs and will gladly accept them from almost anyone who offers. Something about the way she looks at Aunt Jess makes Stiles' skin crawl. Like maybe Aunt Jess has too damned much death hanging around her, even for a banshee.

Aunt Jess stares at Lydia for a long moment, trying to gauge her, and then says brightly, "Lemonade?"

"No, thank you," Lydia says, perfectly formal. "Stiles, if you can show me where your books and notes are, I'll get to work."

Stiles' jaw drops. "Yeah, I can... yeah. Just a sec." He looks at Danny, hoping his face is conveying part "wtf" and part "will you be okay?"

Danny smiles. "I'd love some lemonade, Mrs. Fletcher."

"Of course, Danny. And call me Jessica, please." Stiles absolutely does not titter at the way her New England reserve _melts_ in the face of Danny Mahealani's dimples. They've defused many a tense supernatural standoff (and a few plain old human ones, thanks, racist and homophobic dickcheeses), but for some reason Stiles had doubted its power against unflappable old ladies. He'll apologize later.

For now he watches Aunt Jess thread her arm through Danny's and lead him, not to the refrigerator, but out the back door, saying something about how she prefers lavender, but he strikes her as a basil guy. He has no idea what's going on right now, so he'll focus on the thing he _can_ do—taking Lydia to the guest room. As soon as they're there, Stiles demands, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Lydia blinks. "What are you talking about?"

He flails his arms around at a level he hasn't attained much such freshman year of college. "What am—what am I talking about? I'm talking about how rude you were to Aunt Jess."

"I..." Lydia licks her lips and looks around the room like she isn't sure how she got here. "Was I?"

 _Ooookay_. "Lydia," he says, slowly and carefully, "she offered you lemonade." Lydia glances around for a glass. "You turned her down."

Lydia's eyes widen, and she sinks down on the bed, grabbing the post for support. "I... it's hard to think around her. There's _so much death_ surrounding her. I—it's too vague to scream for, but it's so thick. I must've—I'm sorry, Stiles. I just needed to be away from her."

Well, that'll be a problem eventually, but it's a problem for future!Stiles. Now!Stiles is going to haul a lot of books out from under the bed and try not to think about his great-aunt being too thickly crowded by death for a _banshee_ to be around.

An hour later, Stiles looks up from the book he'd been slowly dragging his way through (they generally divide books by language groups: Romance languages for Lydia; Slavic languages for Stiles; leave the East Asian languages for the Yukimuras; flip a coin for everything else. It's a useful division of labor, but slogging through tenth-century spellbooks in Old Church Slavonic will never be _fun_ ) and realizes Danny isn't back. He frowns. "How long does it take to cut herbs for lemonade?"

Lydia laughs. "Stiles." When he looks at her blankly, she huffs and says, "They haven't been talking about lemonade for almost fifty minutes."

Stiles stares at her. "Are you saying," he says, "that my 118-year-old great-aunt is trying to steal my man?"

Lydia's eyeroll is really, truly epic. " _No_ , Stiles, that is _not_ what I'm saying. _Listen_."

He doesn't do it often, because it's an enormous energy drain for not a lot of impact, but he _can_ extend his senses. He pinpoints Danny and Aunt Jess' general location in the backyard and pushes his magic toward them. The sound quality is shit, like trying to tune in a radio station from Dubuque, but he can at least make out what they're saying.

"Maybe it's petty of me," Aunt Jess is saying, "but I never hex anyone without tarragon. Gives the spell more bite—some extra something I never would've come up with on my own."

That startles Stiles so much he loses the connection for a minute. He rushes to the window and gets sound back as Danny's saying "—like you'd hex anyone."

Aunt Jess scoffs. "I was born in 1901. In my day, _everyone_ knew a hex or two. Here. Let me show you the milkweed. Very useful in healing potions—and the butterflies love it!"

Danny laughs. Stiles knows that laugh. It's the "charmed beyond measure" laugh. Stiles stares down into the garden, where Aunt Jess is talking about all the bee- and butterfly-friendly plants she's put in her garden. "My 118-year-old great-aunt," he says slowly, "is trying to steal my man."

Danny turns and looks up toward the window, a huge grin on his face. Like he knows Stiles is standing there. Like he knows what Stiles is thinking. Danny's magic doesn't allow him to extend his senses, but it never seems to matter. Whatever turbulent emotion is churning Stiles up at any given moment, Danny always knows. As Stiles watches, Danny's smile softens into the one he usually reserves for quiet moments alone together. Stiles relaxes and smiles back, even though he's 92—well, 84—well, at least 70 percent sure Danny can't see him.

He goes back to his book, but he can't make the words come into focus. He needs to work on something else for a while. He sits down on the bed next to Lydia, waits until she's at the bottom of a page and then leans hard on her shoulder. "Tell me what you got."

She huffs and slams the book shut. "It's obviously a complex spell. To have been inciting people to murder for almost a century." She purses her lips and pulls her notebook over, worries the binding with her fingernail. "But there's something… weird about it. I felt the curse when I stood near her. And there was this… blank spot in it. It's this heavy-duty death-based curse, but something central to what's powering it isn't connected to death at all. It's outside of my Sight."

Which, okay, that makes Stiles' blood run cold. All living things die. It's part of the natural order. Anything outside of Lydia's Banshee Sight is something that _wouldn't_ die. And Stiles' experience with things that don't die has been -1/10 Would Not Endure Again.

Stiles only realizes his leg is bouncing when Lydia puts her hand on top of it to hold it down. "Stiles," she says firmly, "you should take a break. Go sit in the garden for a while."

The garden. Where Aunt Jess is charming the pants off Danny. Still. Fresh air. Green things. Danny. He nods, squeezes Lydia's hand, and goes downstairs and out the back.

He'd expected to be upset, seeing Danny and Aunt Jess getting along like a house on fire (he _really_ needs a better metaphor for that). He doesn't begrudge them the connection. But he himself struggles so much with people that watching anyone slip so easily into these kinds of relationships stirs up a lot of envy. But watching the small, proud smile on Aunt Jess' face and the wide grin on Danny's, it's difficult to feel anything but love for them both. Especially when Danny turns and Stiles sees that he's coaxed a single perfect bloom from Aunt Jess' prized peach tea rose. He cradles it between his fingers and looks at Stiles, glowing with magic and accomplishment.

Stiles smiles back and makes his way through the orderly garden to where they're standing. "It's beautiful," he says. He wraps his arm around Danny's waist, and Danny presses his face against Stiles' neck. Stiles smiles at Aunt Jess, who eases the rose away from Danny's hand, and for a minute, everything feels tranquil and hopeful.

Then Danny whispers, "We need to talk to Lydia," and the moment shatters. Stiles squeezes his hip and pulls away. Danny rights himself. He reaches out a hand, and Aunt Jess takes it in both of hers, the rose now threaded neatly into the buttonhole of her cardigan. "Thank you, Jessica," Danny says sincerely.

"You're welcome," she says. Stiles isn't sure if he's imagining that her gaze flicks to him for a second. Then she looks at Danny and says, "The offer's open any time."

And Danny... is Danny _blushing_? What on Earth have they been talking about out here? "I—yeah. I may. Thank you." He slides his hand down Stiles' arm and laces their fingers together Stiles lets his worry go. Some things even two magic-users and a banshee can't control.

They leave Aunt Jess in the garden and return to the guest room via the kitchen, where Danny pours three glasses of lemonade and puts a different herb in each one. Lydia eyes the mint in her glass suspiciously, but Danny's serious face is difficult to resist, and right now his expression is about as serious as it gets, so she drinks. Stiles drinks his basil lemonade and watches Danny as he leans against the closed guest room door and fiddles with the rim of his glass.

Finally Danny takes a sip of his lemonade (lavender, Stiles thinks) and blurts, "It's love," and Stiles' heart plummets to his toes.

Lydia frowns and says, "What's love?" and Stiles, because he's an asshole, murmurs "Got to do with it?" even though he's ninety percent sure he knows what Danny's talking about.

Danny taps his fingers against the glass, and it makes a soft plinking sound. "The space at the center of the curse that you can't see? It's love. Enid Hatton took the supposedly endless love she felt for her husband, and she used it as the heart of the curse she built for Jessica."

Stiles barely manages to get his glass onto the nightstand before his fingers lose their ability to grip. Danny's across the room in a flash, his hands on Stiles' face, moving into his hair and down to his shoulders to anchor him. Stiles puts his hands on Danny's hips to offer him the same anchoring back. Stiles feels numb all over, but also cold. This explains so much. And it's so much worse than they'd thought.

Love is love. At its best, it can undo almost any curse, bind people together, make life happy. But if, out of anger, someone takes love and twists it for destructive magic, then that magic is... well, it's really fucking awful, is what it is. Using love that way creates powerful magic, but it destroys the caster. It's the last spell they'll ever create.

"Well," Lydia says briskly, reaching for her notebook, "this is terrible, but it makes our work a hell of a lot easier." She's right. Stiles knows she's right, but he can't get over how easily she's rolling with the severity of the fuckery they're dealing with.

"Stiles." Danny's right in front of him, and he has to focus. "Hey, Stiles, snap out of it." He looks at Danny, who squeezes his shoulders. "Lydia's right. This is easier now."

Stiles takes a deep breath, and the cold recedes. Another, and the feeling comes back to his hands, slowly working its way through the rest of his body. He nods gratefully at Danny. "Thank you."

Danny nods and sits next to Lydia on the bed, pulling one of their books into his lap. When Stiles looks over, he sees it's not one of the spell books but one of Aunt Jess' journals detailing the murders—more than five thousand, by Stiles' estimate—that the curse has caused to happen around her. The most recent one, by the look of it. Stiles pulls out the previous one, and Lydia keeps working on the curse books, and they get to work.

"Found it!" Lydia says triumphantly two hours later. They're sore and tired and hungry and dehydrated and cranky, but the look in Lydia's eyes as she jabs her finger at the page in front of her makes all of that worthwhile. "I found the curse."

Stiles and Danny crowd around her to look—for all the good it does them, since Lydia's Latin is literally years ahead of either of theirs. Stiles finds himself paying more attention to Danny than to what Lydia's reading them, the way his brown eyes periodically lose focus as he compares what he's hearing to his memory of Aunt Jess' curse, as if he can recall the smell and taste of it in his mind.

Eventually Danny nods. "I mean, I'll have to stand next to her again to be sure, but, yeah. That's the one."

"Great," Stiles says fervently. "How do we break the fucker?"

Compared to some of the other shit they've had to do, breaking this curse will be easy. Unfortunately, it'll also take a while, because it requires a lot of obscure components. Still, if Aunt Jess has lived with the curse this long, she'll be able to stand living with it for another couple weeks.

"Oh, this is interesting," Lydia says. The curse-breaking instructions run to the bottom of the page, and she's flipped to the next one to make absolutely certain they haven't missed anything.

"Good interesting or bad interesting?" Stiles asks.

"Good interesting. It's instructions for neutralizing the curse and put it in suspension until we can break it." She reads on, shoving Stiles' head away when he tries to read over her shoulder. "Looks like we just convince the current spell-carrier to turn the spell over to us—"

"Oh, is _that_ all?" Danny mutters.

"And then have it carried by someone with—" She tilts her head. "Ugh, Renaissance witches. Couldn't write a straightforward sentence to save their lives. Basically, someone needs to carry the curse until we can break it. And that someone needs to be someone with the same kind of love as was used to fuel the curse, except one that's strong and pure."

"Strong and pure?" Stiles demands, throwing his hands in the air and barely noticing when Danny and Lydia lean out of the way. "No, please, ancient scribe, be _more_ vague next time!"

Lydia rolls her eyes. "Well, we know it can't be me, so that's a good start."

Stiles and Danny look at her, startled. "Really?" Danny asks. "You and Jordan have been together, what, five years?"

"Jordan and I have been _intermittently fucking_ for five years," Lydia corrects him. Stiles chokes. "Your dad could do it, Stiles."

Stiles' reaction is an immediate, deep, visceral _no_. He forces himself to be still and think about it. "I... don't think so," he says finally. "If Mom had been alive this whole time, maybe. But—and, I mean, like, don't get me wrong; she's still totally the love of his life, but it's... complicated now." Complicated because the way Mom came back fucked with Dad's head. Complicated because Dad had been dating Natalie at the time, and had long been dancing around _something_ with Melissa, which in no way diminishes his love for Mom but does _change_ it. Complicated because Stiles sees the way Dad looks at Mom, even though she's been back for four years. Stiles looks at Danny the same way sometimes: like he's not convinced that this good fortune is real and permanent and meant for _him_. "I'm happy to try, but in our utopian post-Nogitsune reality, I wouldn't put money on my ability to pull off 'pure' _anything_."

Danny huffs from Lydia's other side. "Obviously, I'll do it."

Stiles lifts his head, stunned. "Y— _what_?"

"Yeah, okay," Lydia says, sounding bored. "I mean, that's what I assumed, but I figured you should be the one to suggest it."

"No, wait, I don't—"

Danny stands, comes around Lydia, and fucking drops to his knees on the floor in front of Stiles. He takes Stiles' hands and looks into his eyes, and the depth of love and hurt in them—Stiles has to look away. He can't see that. "Stiles," Danny says gently, unfazed by the minor meltdown Stiles is having, "I am in this with you. For as long as you'll let me. I never imagined I would have to carry a century curse to prove it to you, but haven't we all done weirder shit for love?"

Stiles feels himself crack. He still needs to know if this will work. But if it does—if Danny's love for him is strong enough to keep this curse neutralized—maybe. Maybe he'll finally be ready to break.

Stiles makes a choked-off sobbing noise and pitches forward so his head rests in the crook of Danny's neck. He breathes in Danny's familiar scent and lets Danny's arms encircle him while he shakes. He's vaguely aware of Lydia saying something cutting and leaving the room with a giant stack of books, but the only sounds he's listening to are the pounding of his own heart and the steady whoosh of Danny's breathing.

Danny's hand slips under Stiles' shirt and moves in long, sure strokes up and down his spine. At first it's comforting, and Stiles uses the rhythm of it to steady his breathing and slow his pounding heart. Then Danny curls his fingers, and the slightest edge of his fingernails drag against Stiles' skin. Stiles' breath hitches for an entirely different reason, and he pulls his head back by way of a series of small, lingering kisses along Danny's jaw line. He curves his kisses toward Danny's mouth and whispers "Danny, please" against his lips.

Danny shudders and kisses him hard. He stands, pulling Stiles up with him and not breaking the kiss. "What do you want?" he murmurs, and Stiles feels like he can barely stand against the layers of meaning he hears in the question. Fucking elemental... whatever the fuck Danny is.

"Please," Stiles says again. "Please let me take care of you."

Danny smiles against Stiles' lips and uses his grip on Stiles' back to pivot them. With his own back now to the bed, he kisses Stiles once more and lets himself fall backward onto the sheets. Stiles licks his lips and follows him down.

He undresses Danny slowly, with trembling, reverent fingers. He takes his time on all that smooth skin, tasting and touching, reveling in the fine quivering of Danny's toned muscles, kissing along the surgical scars where he knows Danny's most sensitive, as always saying a silent prayer of gratitude that Danny's here, Danny's alive. Stiles has certainly had more than enough opportunities to be grateful on both their behalfs for the healing powers of magic, but the wonders of modern medicine made this moment possible, and he never forgets that.

By the time Stiles has Danny's dick in front of him, flushed and leaking, a hot, hard, reassuring weight in his hand, Danny is swearing up a storm, writhing and grasping the sheets. "Stiles," he says, "don't be an asshole."

Stiles grins, because "asshole" is pretty much his default setting, and Danny knows it. But Danny's point is well-taken, so he curls his fingers around the base of Danny's dick where his mouth won't reach and slides his lips around the rest. _This_... this may be the best part of his day.

After, when they're sated and sticky and trying to catch their breath, when Stiles is trying to fight his guilt over having sex in his great-aunt's guest room and Danny is trying to find his other sock, if they each notice tear tracks on the other's face... well. Honest communication is a cornerstone of any healthy relationship, but so too is knowing when to respect each other's silences.

*

It takes the rest of the day, minus meal breaks, but by breakfast the next morning, Stiles, Danny, and Lydia have a list of three women two men who fit the criteria. It's an admittedly short list of criteria: they have to 1) be either a parent or partner of someone who died because of the curse; and 2) have recently and unexpectedly left the local magical community. Carrying a spell that strong takes all of a person's magical energy, and they wouldn't be able to do anything else. Also, a healthy, well-supported member of any strong magical community would have been talked out of carrying the curse in the first place.

Stiles votes for a frontal assault, marching up to each person on their list and demanding to know if they're carrying the spell. Danny offers to start a charm offensive, sure he can keep up a conversation with each possible carrier long enough to feel out their energy.

Lydia, unsurprisingly, suggests a more subtle approach. Also unsurprisingly, it turns out to be the _best_ approach, and the one least likely to end with them being run out of town by a bunch of pissed-off witches who _aren't_ carrying the curse.

Lydia's plan unfortunately requires using Aunt Jess as bait, which has Stiles twitching from the moment she suggests it. He makes Danny and Lydia swear they won't tell the sheriff, and he goes to explain the plan to Aunt Jess.

Aunt Jess, no big shock, is totally on board. She thinks it's _fun_. Apparently being alive for almost a century and a quarter makes you a thrill-seeker. What thrills she thought she could seek in Cabot Cove, Maine, Stiles doesn't know.

"Does everyone know the plan?" Lydia asks for what feels like the fiftieth time. Stiles is getting into his going-out clothes, which for this trip means the one pair of shorts he hasn't worn yet and a plain black T-shirt. Danny's dressed much the same but somehow manages to look like he actually put some planning into it. Lydia's wearing a green sundress and killer wedge sandals, and Stiles looks at the tiny suitcase she brought with her and decides she must, among her many other supernatural qualities, be whatever kind of being Mary Poppins was.

"Go out to dinner with Dad and Aunt Jess," Stiles recites dutifully. "Make ourselves look like happy, attractive targets for the curse. See who shows up."

Lydia rolls her eyes, like she has the last five times, because she doesn't think Stiles is taking this seriously enough, but she nods and raises an eyebrow at Danny. Danny rolls his eyes back, and for some reason Lydia accepts that from him. Stiles is pretty sure the same reaction from him would've earned him a killer wedge sandal in the nads.

Which is how they're now in the alley behind one of Cabot Cove's ubiquitous seafood restaurants, pinning a squirming woman in her late fifties against the cooling brick beside the back entrance.

"Sorry, sweetie," Lydia says, all faux politeness. "I couldn't let you keep running around in those shoes with that dress."

Danny sighs and elbows her out of the way. "We really are sorry about this, ma'am," he says, dimpling for all he's worth. "We need to ask you a few questions."

The woman's name is Nancy Gerhardt. Her husband was murdered by his crooked business partner seventeen years ago. She has the gall to snort (as best she can given Stiles' arm across her throat), and, yup, odds are looking better by the minute that this is their curse-carrier. "What is this? Good cop/bad cop?" She sneers at Stiles. "What does that make you?"

Stiles flashes his sharpest grin. "Feral cop," he snarls. Nancy scoffs, but she looks pale beneath the bravado. "Look," Stiles says, "we can do this one of two ways. Either you agree, calmly and with no tricks, to transfer Jessica Fletcher's curse to us, or we step back, and my friend here screams."

A look of confusion crosses Nancy's face. "Aren't you supposed to say that about _me_? And shouldn't it be _not_ screaming?"

Lydia shrugs and says, "You can scream all you want. But Stiles make frustratingly good sound-dampening charms." Stiles waggles his eyebrows at Danny, who blushes and shoves his shoulder. "So I don't think that's going to do you much good. No, the thing about _me_ screaming is that I'm a banshee."

Now Nancy is visibly sweating, and Stiles feels the minute tremors of her body beneath his hands. He takes slow, deep, even breaths and keeps his eyes on Danny, so he can't hear that tiny voice in his head that reminds him of his time hosting the Nogitsune, how the Nogitsune may have forced him to hurt and twist and destroy, but he'd been aware of every single moment and hadn't always hated it.

"You're bluffing," Nancy says, but her voice shakes too much for it to be believable. "Banshees don't kill. You only scream when you feel a death coming."

Stiles tightens his choke hold. "You don't think we could arrange it?"

"I... I know you!" Nancy squeaks. Stiles tunes out the sound of her fingernails scrabbling against the brick. "You—you're the visiting sheriff's kid. You wouldn't break the law!"

Stiles sighs. He finds it tiring when the bad guys yammer at him. Especially when they're trying to tell him and his pack what they would or wouldn't do. "Lady, if you think that, you obviously don't know a damned thing about cops' kids. Or about me."

"Please," Nancy says, and Stiles sees the depth of the fear in her eyes. "This curse has been my life seventeen years. I don't know what will happen if you take it from me."

It's the closest thing to a compelling argument he's heard out of her. Up to this point, every curse-carrier has held the position until they died. So, no, Stiles _doesn't_ know what will happen to Nancy when they take the curse away from her while she's still alive.

Then he thinks of Aunt Jess, struggling against this curse since she was 19, watching in horror and despair as the people around her were moved to some of the worst atrocities against each other under the curse's influence, and any empathy he had for the woman in front of him blinks out. "Yeah, well," he says. "Jessica Fletcher's been carrying it for 99 years, so... we'll be taking it now."

Stiles moves his hands to Nancy's arms to hold her in place while Lydia recites the proper Latin. She's three-quarters of the way through the spell when Stiles glances at Danny and says, "Last chance, man."

Danny doesn't even blink. He looks at Stiles with steady eyes and a serene almost-smile and says, "I'm ready."

Stiles' doubts about Danny's ability to keep this curse neutralized have never been about _Danny_. Danny moves through this world with a confidence and poise that Stiles can't even emulate, let alone experience. His magic is _strong,_ and he wields it expertly. He is one of the most unfailingly competent people Stiles knows.

Stiles' doubts have always centered around his inability to believe that anyone could love _him_ enough to keep a century curse in suspension. How could he deserve that? It's been a few years since he was "Scott's sidekick," or Derek's, or Lydia's, but in this mind he's still the scrawny, sarcastic nerd who doesn't have much to contribute besides pithy one-liners and dodgy magic. And physically, compared to the other supernaturally attractive people they run around with on the regular—compared to Danny himself, whom Stiles suspects may be an elemental literally formed out of moonlight—Stiles has a _very_ hard time believing that he, Stiles Stilinski, is the one that someone—that _Danny_ —would choose to love enough to counter this curse.

He knows this is disordered thinking. He has been told so, many times, by the very competent therapist he started seeing after Allison died. Logic dictates that any change to that thinking would have to come _from Stiles_ , that nothing Danny could do, no gesture he could make, would convince Stiles until he was ready to believe it himself.

But logic and the supernatural have never played nicely together. So as Stiles watches—as the sickly yellow light of the curse flows out of Nancy and into Danny—he starts to itch with an anticipation he's never felt before. He _wants_ to believe in this. He wants it to work, wants Danny's love for him to be what makes it work. He wants it for Aunt Jess, who's been living with this bullshit for far too long. He wants it for Danny, because if this doesn't work, then Danny becomes the curse-carrier, and he does _not_ deserve to live with the guilt of that. He wants it for himself, because a boy just can't get a clearer sign that another boy is into him, right?

Danny staggers, his face twisting in pain, when the curse goes into him, because it's fucking _huge_ and hungry and a nasty piece of magical work. Lydia holds out her arm, and Danny leans against her side to hold himself up. A look of intense concentration settles on his face, and he slowly rights himself, his expression losing its hurt pinch. He burps, and a puff of yellow mist floats into the air. Danny watches it, considering, and then pokes it with his index finger. Immediately, it turns clear, visible only in the way the light from the street lamps makes it glitter, and dissipates.

Danny grins. "It's working," he announces.

Stiles spends literally half a second making sure Nancy can stand on her own. Then he wrenches away from her and rushes to Danny. He holds Danny's face in his hands and stares into the depths of his eyes, looking for... something. He's not sure what. It's not like he can _see_ the curse.

But, no... he _can_. When he leans back and lets his vision go fuzzy at the edges, something he and Danny have done to each other about a million times, Danny's magical energy looks different. Something glitters among the usual swirl of colors. It must be the curse, suspended among the other parts of who Danny is, rendered harmless for the time being by... Jesus Motherfucking Christ. By Danny's love for Stiles.

Stiles keeps his feet, but only because he has to. They're in a back alley with an irate former curse-carrier and a guy who _really_ needs some extra wards put around him. He has to hold it together. So he leans back in, rests his forehead against Danny's, and whispers, "I love you."

And he swears he feels Danny's magical energy settle even more as he touches Stiles' wrists and says, "I love you, too."

"Guys, this is touching, really," Lydia says dryly, "but what do we do with this woman?"

Stiles reluctantly pulls away from Danny. "We can't leave her here?"

"Not unless you want your dad and Sheriff Metzger coming around asking difficult questions about why we were seen in the alley with a woman they found passed out there at the end of the night."

Stiles looks over sharply. Nancy's skin is pale and waxy-looking, and her breath sounds labored.

"Okay," Stiles says. He reluctantly steps away from Danny. "Hospital, I guess."

While Lydia dials 911, Danny steps up to Nancy and studies her. "The coven you left when you took the curse," he says. "Who's its leader?" Nancy opens her mouth, and Danny holds up his hand. "Not the leader it had when you left. The leader _now_."

Nancy's glare intensifies, but she huffs and says, "Allira Woodruff." Her breath is hoarse and raspy. Danny glances at Lydia, who's dialing her phone again.

"Directory assistance? I'd like the number for Allira Woodruff, please."

God bless small towns.

The ambulance is expected in ten minutes. Allira Woodruff gets there in five. She's probably no more than two years older than they are. She and Danny share a commiserating "white folks" look as she walks past him, and then she kneels beside Nancy where she has, at some point, slumped onto the ground. "What did I tell you?" Allira murmurs. "What did we _all_ tell you?" She glances at the others. "What happened to the curse?"

Stiles shrugs, always willing to play the asshole. "We convinced her it would be in her best interests to let us take it."

"Listen," Lydia says, "we shouldn't be here when the ambulance shows up and the EMTs start asking awkward questions about what happened."

Allira stands and gives them a brisk nod. "I understand. I'm local; I know how the dance goes." She reaches her hand out; Lydia looks at it in surprise but then shakes. Stiles and Danny do the same. "Thank you," Allira says sincerely. "Thank you for doing this for Jessica. For the town."

They blink. "You... asked about the curse," Danny says slowly. "You asked Nancy what had happened to it. You knew?"

"Every magic-worker and supernatural being in Cabot Cove knows about the curse. But the curse itself bars us from doing anything about it. It was always going to have to be an outsider."

Stiles hears the whine of an ambulance siren in the distance—as much as anything is in the distance in this town—and looks at Danny and Lydia. "Come on," Lydia says, "let's go."

They turn, but Allira stops Danny with a hand on his shoulder. He turns, and she takes his face in her hands and studies him intently. He stiffens, and she drops her hands and steps back as a wide smile curves her lips. "Yes," she says, "you are a _very_ good choice." The ambulance sounds much closer now. Stiles grabs a flustered Danny and hauls him away from the alley.

Aunt Jess is waiting for them at the door to the restaurant. Stiles can't read her expression. It's something of a tumult, far more emotions visible than she usually lets show. "Aunt Jess?" he asks cautiously. "What's going on?"

"I was about to ask you that, Stiles," she says. Her voice is strained. "I feel... different." She peers sharply at them. "What did you do?"

Stiles grins, but the others start glaring at him. "You didn't _tell her_?" Danny demands.

Stiles' smile droops, as do his shoulders, but he blusters on the best way he knows how. "No, I didn't, because we weren't sure if this part would work." He looks beseechingly at Aunt Jess, begging her to understand. "I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Aunt Jess snorts, but she stands aside and gestures them inside. "We _will_ be talking about this later."

"We can talk about it right now," Danny says, leading them into a by-no-means-suspicious-looking huddle in the coat room. He and Lydia quickly lay out the details while Stiles absolutely does not sulk about them yelling at him.

When they get to the part where Danny took the curse from Nancy, Aunt Jess's eyes widen, and Stiles sees her fingers flex. That's basically the Aunt Jess equivalent of swooning. She looks Danny over with the same intensity Allira had. "How does it feel?" she asks.

Danny considers. Stiles briefly feels like a bad boyfriend for not having asked. "Heavy. Quiet. But like it could get _un_ quiet at any time. It's... like a sleeping cat." Aunt Jess smiles like he's said the sweetest thing in the world. Stiles and Lydia stifle their laughter. Danny _really_ dislikes cats.

"That was an incredibly foolish and reckless thing you did," Aunt Jess informs them, _like they didn't know_. She takes a deep breath. "And I am very grateful."

*

Progress on collecting the ingredients to permanently destroy the spell is steady but slow. They have the box, a piece Derek had made in his adorably twee workshop. It's going to be a shame to burn something so beautiful and well-crafted. But Derek had assured them it was a custom piece the owner had decided not to claim and that he was happy to have it out of his house. Given the tightness at the corners of his eyes and mouth, visible even on the computer screen as they'd hashed out the details over Skype, he probably meant he made it for whoever he'd been dating at the time and got dumped before he could give it to them.

Everything else is making its way toward them from a wide variety of sources and locations, some of it subject to extensive screening processes in customs. One leaf coming from Indonesia will be in quarantine for a week.

So they do get a vacation of sorts while they wait. Stiles tries to muscle in on the murder investigation a couple times, but Dad shoves him back out before he properly gets a foot in, claiming, "One meddling amateur is enough."

Danny, Stiles, and Lydia do all the cutesy tourist things that Cabot Cove, Maine, has on offer. They go on three-hour boat tours (Stiles hums the _Gilligan's Island_ theme song under his breath nonstop until Lydia threatens to throw him overboard and Danny kisses him long and filthy, right in front of everyone, to shut him up). They drive the rental car up and down the coast. They loaf on the beach, soaking up sun and buying the pack tacky souvenirs from boardwalk shops. Nobody's chasing them. Nobody's trying to kill them, possess them, or destroy their pack. Stiles can't remember the last time he felt so relaxed, so at peace. He thinks he might go crazy waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When it does, it doesn't take the form Stiles expects. It's not Danny losing control of the curse, the curse mutating to stay active in spite of Danny, or the curse attracting some new supernatural menace to town to torment them. It's Lydia, calm, mature, and put-together like always, looking over the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean from beneath a ridiculous yellow sunhat and from over a ridiculously large pink slushy drink, and saying, "We have to talk to Jessica about what happens when the curse breaks."

Stiles stills. His slushy (electric yellow) sits heavy in his gut, and the slick plastic feels like dead flesh in his hand. "Can't we wait?"

"We've _been_ waiting," Lydia tells him. Her voice shakes a little. She knows how hard this is for him, because it's almost as hard for her.

"The bilimbi leaf should come out of quarantine tomorrow," Danny adds. He's wearing short black swim trunks and nothing else, and Stiles can't even appreciate it properly. Danny reaches for Stiles' hand, but Stiles shakes him off and curls his hands toward his chest, protecting his soft, easy hurt center. "That's the last piece we need."

"The it'll just be a matter of waiting until the next dark moon. It's four days."

"We can't ask this of her!" Stiles explodes. "We can't say, 'Hey, Aunt Jess, you didn't ask us to break this curse for you, but we did it anyway, and you—" He swallows.

"I think she knows," Danny says quietly, voice heavy.

"You don't!" Stiles insists. "You _can't_." He tries not to think of the hours Danny and Aunt Jess have spent in her garden trading tidbits about the magical and medicinal uses of every plant she has. He tries not to think about the way they'd whispered to each other when they went out to dinner the other night, giggling so much that Dad had joked that he needed to separate them. He tries not to believe that Danny could know Aunt Jess that much better, because he wants Danny to be wrong about this.

"Only one way to find out," Lydia says. "If she says no, we won't do it. But we'll have to find something else to do with the curse, because we _cannot_ ask Danny to keep carrying it."

"I don't mind," Danny says.

And Stiles... wow, Stiles has been an ass. "No, she's right," he says. "Of course she's right. We have no idea what that curse is doing to you, but it can't be good."

Danny smiles sadly and squeezes Stiles' hand. Stiles tries not to cry. Damn, but he hates this part of his life.

*

"Yes, I'm perfectly aware."

Stiles blinks. He _must_ have heard that wrong. There's no way Aunt Jess knows. Not with the calm way she's pouring iced tea into blue tumblers and arranging shortbread rounds on a plate.

"Aunt Jess, did you hear me?" he asks as though she hadn't spoken. "I said the—"

"Yes." Aunt Jess nods. "I heard you. When you break the curse, it will kill me. I know that. Or at least I'd suspected. Shortbread?"

"No, no _shortbread_!" Stiles explodes out of his seat, pacing the living room and tugging at his hair. "How can you—how are you so _calm_? Why aren't you _angry_?"

"Stiles," Dad says with a familiar warning note in his tone.

"What _good_ does it do me?" Aunt Jess snaps. Her eyes flash, and it's rare that Stiles sees the family resemblance, but he's seen that fierce, determined look in his father's eyes too many times. "I _was_ angry. Ninety-nine years ago, when I realized what Enid had done to me. Then when she died and I _still_ wasn't free. I spent a lot of time and energy being angry then. It didn't change anything. I'm 118 years old, Stiles. I save my anger for where it will be of use."

Stiles sinks into his chair, deflating. He grumbles and takes the glass Aunt Jess insistently presses against his hand, but then he throws himself against the sofa cushions in a monumental sulk, refusing the cookies in petty but satisfying protest.

Aunt Jess sets down the pitcher and sips her tea. "To be perfectly honest, Stiles, I'm relieved. You have no idea what it's been like. Almost a _century_ of someone killing someone more or less _every week_. 5,148 deaths, by my calculation. You don't know what it's like to carry that weight.

"Also, I'm _old_. Older than I have any right to be. I've watched the world get better and worse and better again and worse again, and I'm sick of it. I don't want to find another writing group or learn another kind of phone or buy the Robert Johnson collection in _another_ format."

Her eyes look damp, and Stiles briefly wants to ask if she _knew_ Robert Johnson. Then he remembers how Robert Johnson died and decides he doesn't want to know after all.

"I'm sick of coming up with new explanations for why I'm still alive and relatively spry for my age. I'm sick of my own agent believing that 'J.B. Fletcher' has been a series of people writing my books since the late '90s. I'm sick of watching almost everyone I've ever cared about die while I'm stuck here. Or not die and not even realize why. It's _time_. It's past time."

Heavy silence falls over the room. A storm rages inside Stiles, a place in his core that doesn't want this amazing woman gone from the world. But he tries to imagine living with the Nogitsune for 99 years, and he almost pukes. And anyway, it's not his choice.

"We should discuss what will happen to the other residents of Cabot Cove," Lydia says.

Aunt Jess smiles. "You're a very observant young lady," she says. "I believe the curse has halted them at the age they were when I came into their lives. Normal aging resumes when someone moves away, as it did for them during the time I moved to New York. People aren't stuck like this forever."

"Dr. Hazlitt?" Danny asks.

Aunt Jess clucks her tongue and shakes her head sadly. "He's never taken the best care of himself. He should have a couple of years once the curse lifts, but not many."

"Does he know about the curse?" Dad asks with a wary tone Stiles can't place.

Aunt Jess snorts a frustrated laugh. "I've told him about it. Many times. He refuses to believe me, despite ample evidence." She sighs, more aggravated than anything else. "I'll have another talk with him."

"You have four days," Lydia tells her. "We'll perform the final breaking spell on the night of the dark moon. This Thursday."

For the first time since this whole thing began, Aunt Jess looks less than composed. Color drains from her cheeks, and her gaze skitters around the room, unfocused.

"Aunt Jess?" Dad asks.

She shakes herself back. "I'm all right. It's just... my goodness. Not many people get to know the day and moment of their death so definitively. Even a medical diagnosis has wiggle room. But I suppose there's no question for the three of you."

"It has to be at the dark moon," Danny explains. "There's a banishing energy that—you know what, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you have until Tuesday night to say your goodbyes and put your affairs in order."

Aunt Jess finishes her tea and drops the half-filled plate of shortbread into Stiles' lap. "Well, then," she says, "I have a lot of relatives. I'd better get started."

*

Thursday is a typical blue-sky-and-sunshine day in Cabot Cove, Maine. Stiles isn't sure what he expected: ominous weather, gloomy people, mechanical and technological catastrophe. Shouldn't the town itself rise up to protest the death of Jessica Fletcher?

They spend the day going around town with Aunt Jess on ordinary errands—so Aunt Jess can have one last conversation with everyone, Stiles realizes. Then the Beacon Hills contingent makes dinner for Aunt Jess, Dr. Hazlitt, and Sheriff Metzger. They'd offered to take her out to her favorite restaurant, but she'd insisted on spending the last night of her life in her own house, surrounded by the people she loves and letting everyone else take care of her for once.

Aunt Jess has had _another_ conversation with Seth about the curse, but he still refuses to believe it. Sheriff Metzger has no idea what's going on. Stiles feels like his heart is being ripped out and stomped on over and over. From the look on Dad's face, he feels the same. Danny and Lydia are faring better, but only a little. Aunt Jess can make people fall in love with her in no time flat.

When dinner's been eaten, after-dinner coffee drunk, and pie picked over, they say goodnight to their guests. Seth gives Aunt Jess a hearty, "G'night, Jess. See you tomorrow."

Aunt Jess looks at him sadly and squeezes his hand. "Goodbye, Seth."

Doubt flickers across Seth's face. "Hang on, now," he blusters.

The look on Aunt Jess' face breaks Stiles' heart _again_. "Could we have a minute, please?" she asks.

The others move upstairs and wait awkwardly in the larger guest room. Stiles is itching to march up to Seth Hazlitt and demand to know who he thinks he is, refusing to believe in Aunt Jess' curse and then pitching a fit when she wants to lift it. He doesn't say anything, but Danny must sense what he's thinking, because he wraps his fingers around Stiles' knee and holds on, sure and steady. Stiles _could_ get up if he wanted, but he doesn't want, not with the heat of those fingers and the pressure of that touch grounding him and leeching his anger drop by drop.

More than twenty minutes pass before the front door closes and Seth's car pulls away. Then it's another ten before Aunt Jess appears in the doorway. Her eyes are red and dull, and when she says, "I'm ready now," Stiles believes her with absolute conviction.

Breaking the curse turns out to be the easiest part. It's a complicated working, no surprise for a complicated curse. But Danny, Lydia, and Stiles have broken enough curses that they could do this in their sleep.

Dad holds the space while the others work. Aunt Jess is a perfect participant, following instructions without argument. Whenever they're in a lull, she asks the kind of astute questions that Stiles wishes more curse victims would ask. Then, suddenly, she stops midsentence and gives a small laugh. "Listen to me, asking questions like I'm researching my next book."

"I like it," Danny says, smiling at her. "I like your inquisitive spirit." And no shit, one compliment from Danny has Stiles' 118-year-old cursed great-aunt _blushing_. How is this man real?

It takes four hours. Everyone's exhausted. But it's _done_. Stiles feels the energy shift as the curse breaks and its energy dissipates.

Aunt Jess sits up straighter and looks around with an awed expression. "I had no idea it _weighed_ so much."

"Most people think of magic as ethereal," Lydia says as she packs up the supplies, "but it has substance and weight. A curse that powerful, that's been running that long, has a lot of both."

"And it's really broken?" Aunt Jess asks. "There's no way it could infect anyone else?"

Wow. That is way more concern for others than Stiles would've shown in her position. "None," he assures her. "This curse was keyed to you. Now that it's been lifted out of you and basically smashed to smithereens, it can't do anything else. Especially—" He breaks off with a cough.

"Especially once I'm dead," Aunt Jess finishes. "Well. I would like to sit in my garden and wait for nature, at long last, to take its course." She stands and smiles at Danny. "Would you keep an old woman company in her final hours?"

Danny startles. "Me?"

"Yes, you," Aunt Jess says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Who else?" Danny's eyes cut to Stiles and Noah. Aunt Jess shakes her head. "Family is a tie. It's one of the only things that's made the past 99 years bearable. For one of them, I would fight to hang on. With you I can let go. I trust you to give me that."

Danny's face softens. "I'd be honored," he says.

Stiles can tell that Dad wants to argue as Danny and Aunt Jess move toward the door. Instead he hugs Aunt Jess and says, "You've always been my favorite."

Aunt Jess laughs. "Because I never made you go to church and let you eat as much candy as you wanted. Even as an adult." She holds Dad's shoulders and looks deep into his eyes. "Take care of yourself, Noah," she says. "I don't know what that loss is that I see in your eyes, but I hope you give yourself time to heal."

To Stiles' surprise, Dad squeezes his eyes shut tight and whispers a choked, "I'm trying."

"Good." She squeezes his shoulders and moves to Lydia. They've been warily circling each other most of the time, two queen bees forced to share a hive. Aunt Jess gives her a brief hug, whispers something in Lydia's ear that has them both smiling faintly, and steps back. Their eyes are dry but suspiciously bright.

That leaves Stiles. Aunt Jess looks him over consideringly. "Mieczysław," she says, and Stiles chuckles, because she hasn't got a drop of Polish ancestry or cultural exposure to her name, and her pronunciation has always been atrocious. "From the moment I met you, I knew you were going to have an extraordinary life. I'm glad I've lived long enough to see the shape of the man you're becoming."

Stiles wouldn't stop his tears if he could. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you sooner," he says. "If I had seen at graduation, we could've spared you four years of this."

"Hush, now," Aunt Jess says sternly. "There's no point sighing over what-ifs. You've ended it _now_ , and that's what matters." She glances at Danny. "Plus, back then you wouldn't have been in a position to neutralize the curse. I got to live almost three weeks without a single murder around me. I can't tell you what a gift that's been. So, no. No complaints here about timing or outcomes."

Stiles nods. "All right, Aunt Jess." He needs to say so much to her about how she's inspired him over the years, how much he'll miss her, how he wishes she'd known about the supernatural sooner so he could've told her more about the extraordinary life he's living. But it gets stuck in his throat, and it's not what's relevant anyway. "I love you."

Aunt Jess smiles knowingly. "I love you, too, Stiles."

Then she and Danny walk out of the room, and everything is so very quiet.

Dad looks around, rubs his face. "I'm exhausted. I'm going to my room to lie down." He considers Stiles and Lydia. "It's a really big bed, if anyone needs to be with people right now."

Which is Dad's way of saying _he_ needs to be with people but isn't willing to ask for it. But now that he's mentioned it, yeah. Stiles could use that. "I'm in."

Lydia shakes her head. "I need to be alone for a while."

"You know we don't mind the screaming," Stiles says.

"I don't think I'm going to, actually. I just... I need to be alone."

"Well, if you change your mind," Dad says.

"Thank you, Sheriff," Lydia says, all manners and charm and unyielding obstinence.

The bed in the Dad's room is _very_ large, making Stiles wonder who on Earth needs such a big space. Dad and Stiles lie across from each other and stare, exhaustion fled.

"It's really happening, isn't it?" Dad asks quietly. "She's going to die tonight."

"Yeah."

"I thought I would be more upset."

"I'm sure that'll come later."

"I guess, after Peter, and Kate Argent, and your _mother_ —" His voice cracks. "Maybe I'm out of practice believing that dead lasts forever."

"Boyd, Erica, and Allison are still dead," Stiles says, his own voice wobbling. "Aiden, and Victoria, and the Hales. Donovan. It happens sometimes." He glances in the general direction of the back yard. "It's going to happen here."

Dad snorts. "Can you imagine how pissed she'd be if someone brought her back?"

Stiles snorts, too. And then they're laughing. Great, gusting gales of laughter that can't be stopped until they turn back into tears.

"I love ya, kid," Dad says.

"Love you, too, Dad," Stiles says.

They fall asleep.

*

Stiles isn't aware of Lydia crawling into the bed. But some unknown number of hours later, when Danny's warm hand on his arm wakes him, he's sleeping back-to-back with his dad, and Lydia's tucked into his arms. Stiles hitches a sob and buries his face in Lydia's hair. Lydia scoots over to make room for Danny between her and Stiles (Jesus Christ did Aunt Jess host an _entire circus troupe_ in here?). Stiles reaches his arm across them both and laces his fingers with Danny's where they rest against Lydia's stomach.

"I'm sorry," Danny whispers.

"I'm glad you were with her," Stiles whispers back.

From behind them, Dad murmurs, "So am I."

When minute tremors roll through Danny's body, Stiles holds on tighter and whispers, "I love you." Danny doesn't answer, but he squeezes Stiles' fingers and his shaking subsides into sleep.

Stiles doesn't get another wink.

*

In the morning when Dad calls the funeral home Aunt Jess specified, no one is surprised when they say, "Oh, yes, Sheriff Stilinski, Mrs. Fletcher called us a few weeks ago to make arrangements. Everything's prepaid. Our boys will be there in twenty minutes. We're so sorry for your loss."

Everyone is even less surprised when Seth Hazlitt shows up five minutes later. His face is haggard and his eyes are red. He looks like he didn't sleep all night. He's holding a bouquet of daffodils, which Aunt Jess would have tutted him about, since even Stiles knows they're out of season. "Either I owe an apology, or I'm owed one," Seth says, and Stiles is marginally impressed with his commitment to blustering through at all costs.

"Well, I don't know who you'll apologize _to_ , at this point," Dad says. They do that manly straight dude thing where they try to support each other in difficult times by displaying no emotions whatsoever. "But Jessica's in the garden." Then Seth is walking as quickly as he can without running, through the house and out the back door. They turn away to leave him with his grief.

There's not a ton of work to do. Aunt Jess planned everything out, down to the earrings she wanted to be buried in. They make coffee and start working through her list of "People to Call When I Die." It's a very thorough list. Every contact they make, they hear some variation on, "Yes, Jessica called me a few days ago. It felt like goodbye. Sometimes people just _know_."

 _Buddy_ , Stiles stops himself from saying several times, _you don't know the half of it_.

"Hey, man," Scott insists, when Stiles calls to say they'll be home in a few days, after the funeral, "things are quiet. Take as much time as you need to put her stuff in order."

Stiles laughs and looks around the house. They've called the estate sales organizers who'll pack up Aunt Jess' possessions and the realtor who'll put it on the market after. Per her instructions, they've picked through her things and kept what they wanted—a few pieces of jewelry for Lydia; a couple photo albums for Dad; some gardening tools for Danny; all the curse-related documents and a piece of hand-written sheet music inscribed _For Jess, From Robert_ for Stiles. They're in communication with her agent and publisher. "Scott, ol' buddy ol' pal," Stiles says, "by the time the funeral's over, there won't be anything else _to_ put in order."

In the three days between Aunt Jess' death and funeral, they get literally all of her affairs in order. Dad even finds the time to help Sheriff Metzger catch the killer who brought Dad to Cabot Cove in the first place, a rogue witch who'd been using the curse's energy to feed his twisted rituals. With the curse gone, he's just a clumsy guy who can't get away from the scene of his last murder before a neighbor spots him and provides a description to the police (and by "description," Stiles means, "It was that nice young man who works mornings at the driving range").

On one hand, it seems sort of depressing, that a life of 118 years could be so completely... tidied in three days. If _Stiles_ lives 118 years, his survivors will be sorting out his shit for the _next_ 118 years. But Aunt Jess has always been a practical sort, so he supposes it makes sense for her death to be as orderly as her life.

The funeral is rough. First because it's jam-packed with people who knew Aunt Jess and feel entitled to demand the story, over and over, from the people who were with her when she died. Secondly, because even in three days they're seeing the changes in the longtime Cabot Cove residents. Aunt Jess assumed they'd resume normal aging, but it looks accelerated, which means the town may soon see a death wave worse than any it experienced during the curse. One more "fuck you" from Enid Hatton.

"I don't know," Dad says as they climb into the rental car to head to the airport. "This might not be a bad vacation spot. Now that there's no murder curse on it."

Stiles looks around. The town is as freakishly picturesque as ever. And it's about a thousand times safer now. But it's haunted. It needs time for grieving and healing, not a glut of tourists.

Stiles gets into the back seat beside Danny and watches the town roll past the window as Dad drives them through it. He doubts he'll be back again.

*

 **_EPILOGUE_** : three months later

Stiles reluctantly abandons the adoptable dog profiles he's been bookmarking and answers the door to a bored-looking UPS guy with a box under his arm. "Delivery for Danny..." and then a garble of consonants that's possibly supposed to be "Mahealani."

"Yeah, he's out back, let me—"

"You can sign for it." The guy shoves the tablet in Stiles' face; Stiles signs automatically.

This is one of the weirdest things to adjust to, living with Danny, the way the world treats them more like a single entity than like a couple made of two distinct parts. Stiles had been sure he would _hate_ that. Having spent time _actually possessed_ by a demon that stole his body and shoved his identity into a dark box at the bottom of his mind, this transition from Stiles and Danny into StilesDanny ought to _terrify_ him. Instead he kind of likes it, the way everyone now seems to take their coupleness as such a given. Or maybe it's that _he_ now takes it as a given and wants everyone to be as happy for him as he is for himself.

Stiles signs the tablet and hauls the box inside. It's much heavier than its size suggests. He lets it drop to the floor and kick-slides it up the hallway and across the dining nook to the sliding glass door in the back of the house. He eases the door open and listens for Danny.

Before their trip to Cabot Cove, Danny hadn't been interested in gardening. The backyard was intended as a place for eventual dogs to run around in. But all the time he'd spent with Aunt Jess in her garden must've turned his head; as soon as they'd gotten through security at the Bangor airport, he'd started talking about the weird little jut in the backyard (the result of a territory dispute between the witch who used to live in Stiles and Danny's house and the clutch of Seelie Fae who used to live next door. This is what Derek says, anyway. Stiles is pretty sure Derek is trolling them) and how good it would be for a small vegetable garden, maybe with an herb border.

Danny's working on the tomatoes. Stiles can tell because he's singing bawdy sea-shanties—Stiles didn't know this many bawdy sea shanties existed, let alone that Danny knew them all. But he swears they're what tomatoes like to hear.

Stiles comes around the corner and, sure enough, Danny's staking the tomatoes, singing as he goes. Stiles leans against the side of the house and watches for a minute, the way sweat plasters his white T-shirt to his back, showing off his delicious muscles. The way his hair, overdue for a cut, curls around his ears and flops over his eyes. The look of sheer bliss on his face as he digs his fingers into the dirt. He looks so happy, and it's a shame to ruin the moment, but Stiles is impatient, and there's an unopened box in the doorway.

"Hey, cutie," he calls.

Danny looks up, his song fading as a grin splits his face. "Stiles! Come see how the tomatoes are doing."

"In a minute. You got a delivery."

Danny looks around. "Where?"

"Just inside the door. It's heavy."

"Oh, well, if that's all." Danny concentrates for a minute, and seconds later the box floats over, neat as you please, and settles on the ground at Danny's feet without stirring up a single puff of dust.

"Show-off," Stiles mutters, like they don't both know how much it turns him on that Danny can do that.

Danny grins and uses his gardening trowel to slice through the tape (weird, but no less a turn-on). He opens the box, moves some packing materials around, and whispers, "Oh."

Stiles crosses to him quickly, peering into the box. It's advance reader copies of Aunt Jess' last book. "Oh," he echoes faintly.

Stiles grips Danny's shoulder while Danny's trembling fingers lift the top book from the box. Aunt Jess' will stipulated that Danny and Stiles be provided with these copies, but frankly they'd forgotten about it after her attorney told them three months ago.

It looks like standard Aunt Jess fare: title in needlessly ornate gold font, an illustration that looks like a cross between a Nancy Drew mystery and a Harlequin romance, and Aunt Jess' pen name obscured among the fern fronds in the illustration. Stiles and Danny both give a laugh as they open the cover.

They flip past the publisher's stuff at the beginning. Then they get to the dedication and have to sit down, right there in the dirt beside the tomato plants. In Aunt Jess' typical terse style, it says, 

> _For Stiles, Danny, and Lydia, who righted a long-overdue wrong._

"Oh, shit, that jerk," Danny mutters.

Stiles starts laughing, and also crying, and he and Danny sit in the dirt, books in hand, surrounded by growing things, and cry for a woman who lived with death for far too long and finally gets to taste it herself.

**Author's Note:**

> [something tumblr this way comes](hugealienpie.tumblr.com)


End file.
